05 October, 2014

Empathy
among corporate managers is in short supply, according toa surveyof
more than 600 employees by talent mobility consulting firm Lee Hecht Harrison.
The survey found that 58% of managers fail to show the right level of
understanding toward their employees.

“Empathy isn’t a weakness, but fundamental to
good management,” said Kristen Leverone, senior vice president for Lee Hecht
Harrison’s Global Talent Development Practice. “It means being able to
understand and relate to others’ feelings. After all, if a supervisor or
manager can’t tune into the feelings of employees, it’s going to be very
difficult to motivate or engage them. The survey seems to have struck a chord,
and the findings should raise concerns for management.”

What is empathy? It’s an understanding of
someone else’s world, and showing the person that you understand.

Empathy is not agreement — and it’s not sympathy
(“oh, you poor thing”) — it’s simply understanding something from the other
person’s perspective.

So how can you be a more empathetic leader? Here
are five ways:

1. Get to know your employees.

How well do you really know your employees? Try
this test: take out a piece of paper, and for each employee, see if you can
name their spouse or significant other, names of their kids, where they live,
where they went to college and where their parents live.

If you came up with a lot of blanks, I’d
recommend spending a little more time in your one-on-ones asking and sharing
before you jump right into status reports. It’s how relationships and trust are
built, and demonstrates that you are interested and care.

2. One-on-ones?

You are havingregular one-one-oneswith
each of your employees, aren’t you? If you’re not, its kind and hard to be
empathetic if you don’t have a clue what your employees are doing.

3. Show interest in your
employee’s day-to-day work.

A lot of managers like to think of themselves as
big-picture managers, with little interest in knowing the gory details of every
aspect of their employee’s jobs. While no employee wants to be micro-managed,
employees do appreciate it when their managers show an interest and
appreciation for what they do. Who knows, you might even learn something.

4. Listen — and respond with
empathy.

Responding with empathy means letting your
employee know you heard and understood both what they said, as well as how they
feel. It’s harder than it sounds, and will take some practice, but people will
appreciate even the clumsiest of efforts.

Example: “So Jane, let me see if I understand —
you’ve been frustrated at the lack of support that you are getting from IT? Is
that is?”

Listening not only shows people you care, and
that you “get it”, it also often allows people to solve their own problems,
just from being able to talk it out with someone.

5. Lend a hand.

Lending a hand, removing roadblocks, providing
support and/or resources — that’s what managers are supposed to do, right? When
someone is having a problem, they are stuck, or just can’t figure it out on
their own; “Figure it out, that’s what you’re paid to do” isn’t very
empathetic. You may not come right and say that, but you may be coming across
that way.

I had the opportunity to listen to a CEO talk
about his company culture at a presentation lately. He took a lot of pride in
making sure he knew every employee’s name (about 300 employees), and liked to
wander around chatting with each of them, asking about their jobs, their
families, etc.

During one of these chats, one of his plant
managers let him know that his son had been recently arrested — he made a
stupid mistake. Needless to say, this was weighing heavily on the manager’s
mind. The CEO asked him if he had an attorney — and he didn’t. That day, the
CEO found an attorney for him and paid for it. Turns out the CEO had a similar
experience with his own son.

While this may be an extreme example of empathy
and lending a hand, can you imagine the impact that gesture had on that plant
manager’s commitment to his company and his motivation? Priceless.

About the author: Dan McCarthy is the director ofExecutive Development Programsat the University of New
Hampshire. He writes the award-winning leadership development blogGreat
Leadershipand is consistently ranked as
one of the top digital influencers in leadership and talent management. He’s a
regular contributor to SmartBrief and a member of the SmartBrief on Workforce
Advisory Board.E-mailMcCarthy.

Most managers are rationale, logical, practical problem solvers
when they first get promoted. Then, through organizational conditioning, they
learn to play silly games. They are likethe frog in a pan of
boiling water. The change is so gradual; these silly games
eventually begin to feel like “real world management.”

How many of these silly management
games do you play? More importantly, do you have the courage to speak up and
stop the insanity?

We’ll start with some silly
budgeting games:

1.“Use it
or lose it budgeting.”This is
when you are getting close to the end of the year and your budget is running
under your forecast. In previous years, when you under spent, your next year’s
budget was set based on that year’s actual. So, in order not to have your
budget cut again, you go on a shopping spree — buying stuff you really don’t
need or stocking up just in case you might need it.

2.“Lowballing your forecast.”This one is kind of the opposite of No. 1. In
this game, the idea if to “sandbag,” or undercommit to what you think you can
actually do. That way, then the powers above ask you to increase your goal, you
know you can do it. Then, you look even better for exceeding your target.

3.“The shell game.”This is when orders are given to cut expenses
in one category, i.e., travel, so you increase spending in another catalog,
i.e., conferences, and bury the costs. Or, management says to reduce money
spent on postage, so you spend more money on bike couriers. There is a net gain
of zero, perhaps even an increase in spending.

4.“Pass the trash.”This is when you “encourage” an
underperforming employee to apply for other jobs within the company. When you
are asked for a reference, you give glowing reviews, or use code word phrases
like “Oh, Wally is a great guy! He just needs an opportunity to leverage his
skills in a new environment more suited to his strengths.”

5.“A warm body is better than no
body.”Hiring
freezes bring out a lot of silly management gamesmanship. This one is when you
have an underperforming employee, but you won’t take action because you’re
afraid you won’t be able to replace the headcount. So the rest of your
employees get to suffer the consequences.

6.“Gladiators.”This is when you ask two employees to work on
the same problem. Let ‘em duke it out and let the best solution emerge!

Organizational silly games:

7.“Risk”(empire building). “Risk”
is the game of conquest, where one army invades another country and captures
the land in order to build up an empire. I’ve heard managers also call this
game “a land grab.” The idea is to lobby to your boss and anyone that will
listen that your department can do the other department’s job better than they
can, so you should take it over.

8.“Shaking the bird cage.”Some employees call frequent, questionable
reorganizations “shaking up the bird cage.” You get a lot of noisy chaos and
ruffled feathers flying, and at the end of the day, the same bunch are sitting
on different perches, albeit a little dizzy from all of the cage-rattling.
Nothing else seems to change.

Strategy silly games:

9.“Trivial Pursuit.”This is when the company has no strategy, so
the manager keeps everyone busy fighting day-today fires, jumping from one hot
priority to the next.

10.“Clue.”This is when the company does have a strategy,
but it’s such a secret or so high level and vague that the manager has to guess
what it is or make up their own.